Dynasty Warriors 9 Review – PlayStation 4

Admittedly, I may have been a bit hard on the Dynasty Warriors franchise in the past; but after playing nearly all of the Dynasty Warriors console titles and its spin-offs Samurai Warriors and Warriors Orochi, the formula can be a bit tiring.

While I have always been impressed with the overall scale of the Dynasty Warrior games, I have never been much of a fan of the monotonous button mashing “Musou” combat and overly complicated storylines. For me, each Dynasty Warrior title follows the same path: it start out as an exhilarating and cathartic romp for the first hour or so, then quickly devolve into a mindless snoozefest.

With Dynasty Warriors 9, long-time developer Omega Force makes a valiant attempt at updating the staid Dynasty Warriors formula with an all-new open-world overhaul. Instead of the standard (and often confusing) menu-based mission assignment, Dynasty Warriors 9 now allows gamers to travel the map from battle to battle, visiting remote villages and completing side missions along the way. And while I wasn’t completely sold on the idea that going open-world could possibly do anything to change my experience, I found myself pleasantly surprised by the product that was delivered.

The key to the success of Dynasty Warriors 9’s open-world is that it is both huge in scale, and absolutely full of interesting and unique features. Gamers will find themselves exploring villages, trading with coin collectors, shopping for weaponry and enhancements, visiting restaurants, and even buying and decorating houses.

Spread over a sprawling representation of ancient China, each region is relatively unique to itself in terms of landscape, architecture, and climate. And whereas weather and time are generally little more than a visual effect in many games, both play a major role in Dynasty Warriors 9’s gameplay. For instance gamers may choose to travel and/or attack during storms or at night when enemies are generally taking shelter or sleeping. Omega Force really did an excellent job bringing ancient China to life with Dynasty Warriors 9.

Dynasty Warriors 9’s combat is still just as outlandish as ever, with a single warrior hacking and slashing his or her way through wave upon wave of advancing enemies – and I’m not talking about tens of enemies, I mean hundreds, even thousands, at a time. As ridiculous as it sounds, the experience is really quite visceral, with the rhythm of the attack meaning almost as much as the nature of the attack.

Dynasty Warriors 9 introduces a new method of attacks featuring three main types, each mapped to a button: Flow Attacks, Reactive Attacks, and Trigger Attacks. Flow Attacks change with the state of the enemy – think of them as quick contextual attacks that change to best address whether the enemy is on the ground or has taken to the air. Reactive Attacks are mostly the heavy-scale attacks and counters. Finally, Trigger Attacks change an enemy’s state by throwing him up in the air, smashing him to the ground, or otherwise stunning them. To be honest, it’s not a whole lot unlike a standard 3-button fighting scheme, but it does lend to the rhythm required to address and eliminate a thousand enemies in a matter of minutes.

Dynasty Warriors 9 offers a surprisingly long 10-chapters of gameplay with over 80 playable characters dating back to the earliest days of the franchise’s Three Kingdoms. The storyline is as confusing as ever, with hours upon hours of text to muddle through – as I believe I have mentioned in prior reviews, the hardest part for westerners to grasp are the countless names (at least 80 in this case) that often have only minor differences between making it difficult to follow a storyline. One would hope the English voiceover might help, but sadly it only makes things worse – thankfully the voices break up the monotonous heavy-metal guitar soundtrack, but not enough to make it any less irritating.

Visually, Dynasty Warriors 9 is passable for a PS4 title, but nothing to write home about. The textures are muddy and the draw-in distance is laughable. Still, there is a certain aspect of awe that comes with having a couple hundred characters popping on the screen at any given moment, even if they all do look the same. The character animations are stiff, and characters snap from target to target in a rather unrealistic way, but again with so many characters on screen at once it is impressive.

Dynasty Warriors and its various spinoffs have always been best suited for those who are already fans of the franchise and are looking for more of the same. With Dynasty Warriors 9, Omega Force does a commendable job taking the series into new a territory without messing up the formula that the fans are looking for. I enjoyed my time with Dynasty Warriors 9 more than any other title in the series, and while it will never find itself on my best-of list I am looking forward to what Omega Force has in store for their next release.

Author: Arend Hart
Veteran gamer and review writer, Arend has been playing and reviewing games for Game Chronicles since the beginning with more than 400 reviews over the past 20 years, mostly focusing on PlayStation.

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